Monday, 13 October 2014

Gaijin Myths About Japan: An Introduction

A long
time ago, scholars and students in “the West” studied East
Asia and the Orient. Large quantities of important knowledge were
produced by dedicated researchers well before the existence of the internet. The
greatest blow to this body of knowledge - ironic since it was steeped in
liberal tradition - was its democratization. This occurred in two steps.

First,
rising levels of wealth in the west resulted in greater numbers of people began
to travel, for pleasure, for new experiences, for commerce and further
research. Newly made travelers began to write new narratives freed from the
constraints of academia and more in tune with the self discovery spirit of the
age. Autobiographical accounts trickled into mainstream media and began to
shape the West’s image of “the East” with a speed and reach far exceeding that
of traditional academe.

Next
came two phases of what we call the internet. The first phase - still
relatively obscure, its content limited to those with the money, infrastructure
and skills to produce and publish content – developed into a fusion of
scholarly knowledge and autobiography as an increasing volume of information
became available. These early internet pioneers had a profound impact on the
not only the quality of real and useful information but also in developing pseudo-legitimate
mythologies.

Without
peers, without a community to immediately be challenged by and answer to, such
early virtual locales were invested with a weight of authenticity at times somewhat
disproportionate to their veracity.

This phase
(the Geocities Daze) gave way a common experience of the internet built on social
networking technologies and eventually liberated from the desktop by
smartphones. This new phase distributed information at a rate and breadth
completely outstripping its now rather archaic ancestor. In the first phase,
the creation of knowledges, however (im)perfect required a significant
investment of time. So too did their acquisition and utilization. However, in
the second phase (the Smartphone Daze) as a result of converging technologies
(improved search engines, twitter, facebook, aggregate readers etc) new
information can be widely disseminated in moments.

Given
the capacity for instant feedback/critique it is possible to assume that quality
of information may be guaranteed through crowd control. Not unlike Wikipedia.
However, as is repeatedly seen, in multiple locations on a daily basis, the sheer
volume and variety of information, coupled with an increased tendency toward
laziness has resulted in a form of critical blindness. In other words, because
of information overload, because of homogenized social communities built on
superficial connections, confirmation bias is an all too common feature of contemporary
public knowledge production processes.

So what
does this have to do with Asia? And what does
it have to do with Japan?

I
recently read an article in the trash known as Japan Today. A news re-publisher
with an extremely toxic and immature comment feature. The article in question
can be found here: JT Trash About Teaching English.

A
location in which commentators with little to no local language ability or
formal/trained educational education experience reheated dated arguments about
why “they can’t learn English”.

So why
do I care?

I have
been living in Japan
for over ten years. I have said, read, heard and seen the same trash
stereotypes over and over. And the thing is, with so many foreigners orking and
living in Japan,
you might think that these out of date, at times verging on unbelievable
knowledges would have been thoroughly disproved. But as I wrote above,
confirmation bias, lack of depth and failure to engage with local communities
has seen not only the continuation of these knowledges but their amplification
through contemporary internet technologies.

This little
feature series is an attempt to address some of them from a long term resident’s
perspective. Brace yourself because it is not going to be nice, feelings might
be hurt and fantasies popped. Part One: The Salaryman coming soon.